Alien Space Bats Attack!
Sep. 6th, 2004 11:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sinanjuOr so it seems in S. M. Stirling's newest novel, Dies the Fire, in which all of our modern electrical and electronic technology suddenly stops working, along with gunpowder, explosives and even steam engines.
The novel follows essentially two different groups of people; a pilot and the family of five he was flying somewhere in small plane when it happened, and a group of wiccans/hippies/SCA types in the Willamette Valley.
Needless to say, the pilot and family survive his emergency crash landing in the wilderness of Idaho. They twig pretty quickly to the fact that something is seriously wrong because nothign electronic or electrical is working, and neither is the pilot's rifle when he tries it. The powder in the shells burns, but not fast. But they don't discover the extent of the problem til later, after they've hiked out of the wilderness area.
The group in the Willamette Valley discover the truth more quickly, what with the power failing (including batteries), cars not starting, and planes falling out of the sky at the local airport.... The brighter characters very quickly figure out that Things Have Changed, and that things are going to get very unpleasant very soon, and so they head for safety in the wilderness.
Things, as per usual in a disaster/post-apocalyse novel, do in fact get very bad. Imagine Peter Falk as the grandfather in The Princess Bride explaining the story to his grandson. "It's got fighting and fencing and wildfires and starving hordes and cannibals and would-be tyrants and plague...." The characters try not to think about how bad it must be in the really big cities like L.A. or New York (or Mexico City or most of Europe); the mass starvation and swarms of starving city dwellers plaguing the area in and around Portland, Oregon are bad enough. The characters also wonder what could have happened, and how, with theories ranging from God's judgement ("last time he sent a flood, this time he took away fire") to Alien Space Bats (hostile aliens tormenting us for who knows what reasons). Ultimately, none of them know.
I enjoyed this novel, as did my wife,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
snippy. However, she does not intend to read any sequels; I probably will, but only while ready to drop them at a moment's notice. This book, like Island in the Sea of Time, is full of nifty stuff. Alas, the sequels to ISOT were mostly concerned with battles of one sort or another and not the really interesting stuff (to us) of watching characters cope with their island home being somehow transported intact to the Bronze Age. I read the second ISOT novel, but never read the third one (aside from thumbing through it to find out what happened to Walker). I just didn't care. snippy expects the sequels to this one to be similar, and she's probably right.
As it is, there's plenty of fighting in this book. I don't mind, but by the end of this novel, the two groups have both acquired a considerable number of followers, established themselves as powers to be reckoned with. And they're wealthy by the standards of the Changed world, in that they have managed to plant and harvest--and defend--enough food to see them through the coming winter and plant again next year. Most of the population has died off by then, and survivors have mostly banded together in various places and are either cooperating or (in the case of bad guys) living off the labor of their victims. The initial scramble to survive and find a long-term answer to the collapse of civilization is over.
And that's the most interesting part to us. But the Protector of Portland, a self-styled villain who plans be a King, though he's suffered some setbacks, is still out there and will have to be dealt with. In which case, the the story won't be nearly as interesting to us. We'll see, I suppose.
The novel follows essentially two different groups of people; a pilot and the family of five he was flying somewhere in small plane when it happened, and a group of wiccans/hippies/SCA types in the Willamette Valley.
Needless to say, the pilot and family survive his emergency crash landing in the wilderness of Idaho. They twig pretty quickly to the fact that something is seriously wrong because nothign electronic or electrical is working, and neither is the pilot's rifle when he tries it. The powder in the shells burns, but not fast. But they don't discover the extent of the problem til later, after they've hiked out of the wilderness area.
The group in the Willamette Valley discover the truth more quickly, what with the power failing (including batteries), cars not starting, and planes falling out of the sky at the local airport.... The brighter characters very quickly figure out that Things Have Changed, and that things are going to get very unpleasant very soon, and so they head for safety in the wilderness.
Things, as per usual in a disaster/post-apocalyse novel, do in fact get very bad. Imagine Peter Falk as the grandfather in The Princess Bride explaining the story to his grandson. "It's got fighting and fencing and wildfires and starving hordes and cannibals and would-be tyrants and plague...." The characters try not to think about how bad it must be in the really big cities like L.A. or New York (or Mexico City or most of Europe); the mass starvation and swarms of starving city dwellers plaguing the area in and around Portland, Oregon are bad enough. The characters also wonder what could have happened, and how, with theories ranging from God's judgement ("last time he sent a flood, this time he took away fire") to Alien Space Bats (hostile aliens tormenting us for who knows what reasons). Ultimately, none of them know.
I enjoyed this novel, as did my wife,
snippy. However, she does not intend to read any sequels; I probably will, but only while ready to drop them at a moment's notice. This book, like Island in the Sea of Time, is full of nifty stuff. Alas, the sequels to ISOT were mostly concerned with battles of one sort or another and not the really interesting stuff (to us) of watching characters cope with their island home being somehow transported intact to the Bronze Age. I read the second ISOT novel, but never read the third one (aside from thumbing through it to find out what happened to Walker). I just didn't care. snippy expects the sequels to this one to be similar, and she's probably right.As it is, there's plenty of fighting in this book. I don't mind, but by the end of this novel, the two groups have both acquired a considerable number of followers, established themselves as powers to be reckoned with. And they're wealthy by the standards of the Changed world, in that they have managed to plant and harvest--and defend--enough food to see them through the coming winter and plant again next year. Most of the population has died off by then, and survivors have mostly banded together in various places and are either cooperating or (in the case of bad guys) living off the labor of their victims. The initial scramble to survive and find a long-term answer to the collapse of civilization is over.
And that's the most interesting part to us. But the Protector of Portland, a self-styled villain who plans be a King, though he's suffered some setbacks, is still out there and will have to be dealt with. In which case, the the story won't be nearly as interesting to us. We'll see, I suppose.
